Fairtrade mark popularity rises at a rapid pace in the Czech Republic

It has been ten years since products bearing the Fairtrade Certificate
started being sold on the Czech market. The anniversary comes side by side
news that 2013 was the best year for Fairtrade sales in the country so
far.
With Czechs having bought products worth 173 million crowns, retail sales
went up 80 percent more than in 2012. Fairtrade continues to widen its
reach and assortment across Czech retail stores and raise awareness of the
mark through various campaigns. It also seems to be profiting from an
emerging trend of more critical consumers.

In a country where most people look primarily at prices when shopping for
food the news may come as a surprise. However, there are indicators which
show why Fairtrade products saw such rapid growth in demand over the past
decade.

One of these is the fact that Fairtrade is still a relatively new mark on
the Czech market and its products are continuing to be added into many
retail stores across the country. This can lead to rapid increases in
sales, like it did in 2010 when purchases went up 60 percent after Fair
Trade products were introduced into a number of superstores across the
country.

Profits have also come from the adoption of Fairtrade products in major
gastronomic facilities like café chains Starbucks and Tchibo which became
Fairtrade’s main source of profits during 2011 when the economic crisis
was hitting superstore sales in the Czech Republic.

Coffee has traditionally been Fairtrade’s most successful product in the
Czech Republic, generally accounting for more than half of all the
organization’s sales in the country. Veronika Bačová, head of the
Media
section of Fairtrade ČS said this is not only because Czechs
traditionally
tend to be big coffee drinkers. “Coffee generally tends to be a
popular
product where Fairtrade is a new phenomenon because there is a wide offer
and it is easy to find demand. But right now we are also working on
introducing
products which are popular abroad but haven’t yet broken into the Czech
market. Particularly bananas and flower cuts.”

Another reason behind the organizations success has been its activity in
raising awareness across the Czech Republic. This includes getting
schools,
local churches and regional towns to use and support Fairtrade products in
their area, an example of this practice being the recent addition of the
Czech University of Life Sciences’ Faculty of Tropical AgriSciences into
the program.

However, apart from the impact of the awareness campaigns and market
expansion, Bačová said there is another major reason behind why Czechs
buy more Fairtrade products: “After a number of scandals connected
to
rotten or false imported food were uncovered in recent years, people have
become more careful about what they buy and where it comes from. We
believe
that our focus on providing detailed information about the products origin
on every package has led to our foodstuffs becoming more sought after.”

Despite a new interest in what it is they are buying, many Czechs still do
not fully understand what the mark means and believe it is automatically a
sign of higher quality. “Consumers often buy our certified products
without being aware that it has been ethically traded. In this respect it
is necessary to further educate Czech society about our mark,”
said
Jiří Remr from the Institute for Evaluations and Social Analyses who is
also a member of the managing board of Fairtrade ČS.

The organization admits there is still much work to do in the Czech
Republic, but is proud of its success in establishing a stable share in
the
Czech market and wishes to grow further. In April Fair Trade’s
representative in the Czech Republic announced it would expand into
Slovakia and renamed itself Fairtrade ČS. According to Juraj Hipš,
director of CEEV Živica, a Slovakian NGO concerned with educating the
public on
matters of sustainable consumption, the situation in Slovakia is similar
to
what it was in the Czech Republic: “Many people in Slovakia don’t
know
the Fair Trade mark. A lot of them think it is a charity.”